A wireless communication device, such as a mobile phone device or a smart phone, may include two or more Subscriber Identity Modules (SIMs). Each SIM may correspond to at least one subscription via a Radio Access Technology (RAT). Such a wireless communication device may be a multi-SIM wireless communication device. In a Multi-SIM-Multi-Active (MSMA) wireless communication device, all SIMs may be active at the same time. In a Multi-SIM-Multi-Standby (MSMS) wireless communication device, if any one SIM is active, then the rest of the SIM(s) may be in a standby mode. The RATs may include, but are not limited to, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA), Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA), Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) (particularly, Evolution-Data Optimized (EVDO)), Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems (UMTS) (particularly, Time Division Synchronous CDMA (TD-SCDMA or TDS) Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA), Long Term Evolution (LTE), evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (eMBMS), High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), and the like), Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), Code Division Multiple Access 1× Radio Transmission Technology (1×), General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), Wi-Fi, Personal Communications Service (PCS), and other protocols that may be used in a wireless communications network or a data communications network.
Some communication activities of various RATs can be cyclical, repeated at least once in a given repetition period or cycle. For instance, eMBMS data can be broadcasted based on a data burst schedule, according to which eMBMS services in data bursts are scheduled to be broadcasted within each Mutlicast Channel (MCH) Scheduling Period (MSP). In addition, the wireless communication device wakes up once per Discontinuous Reception (DRX) cycle for receiving and decoding pages on WCDMA, LTE, GSM, TDS, 1×, and the like.
Activities of two subscriptions in a MSMS wireless communication device can overlap with one another in time, resulting in contention for the shared RF resource and causing reception or transmission failure on the subscription that is denied access to the RF resource. This problem can be especially pronounced when period or cycle lengths of two RATs (each associated with a different subscription) are the same, because collision in one period or cycle can persist through subsequent cycles. User experience can be drastically degraded given that persistent failures can lead to low data throughput, dropped calls, and wasted time and power.